


A Different Kind of Grimm

by DizzyDrea



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-13
Updated: 2012-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-01 22:11:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DizzyDrea/pseuds/DizzyDrea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's a Grimm, but he wants to be a different kind of Grimm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Different Kind of Grimm

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I wasn't going to do this. I really wasn't. But, I love this show; love the concept, love the characters. It meshes two of my favorite genres: Sci-fi and the Police Procedural. I saw a prompt on the Grimm Kink Meme over on Dreamwidth, asking how the wesen know Nick's a Grimm. The Shower Muse latched on, and this is the result.
> 
> Disclaimer: Grimm is the property of NBC, Universal Television, GK Productions, Hazy Mills Productions, Open 4 Business Productions LLC and a lot of other people who aren’t me. I am doing this for fun and for practice. Mostly for fun.

~o~

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.  
~Friedrich Nietzsche

~o~

Nick wonders, in the quieter moments—when he's curled up on the couch with Juliette watching a movie, when he's filling out reports at his desk, the hum of the precinct a constant presence in the background, when he lays awake at night because he's too amped up from a successfully resolved case—what the wesen see when they look at him.

He's seen it too many times to count by now: that moment when a wesen recognizes who and what he is. Their eyes go wide, they rear back. The fear is almost palpable, and for a moment, he's never sure if they're going to fight or run. He's perfected the speech, the one where he says he's not going to kill them, and it always makes him cringe, just a little, that he even has to say it out loud.

Still, he wonders how they know. Does he have a monster's face, lurking just beneath the surface that only the wesen can see? Or a symbol somewhere on his person that marks him as a Grimm? Is there some kind of aura or—and god forbid it if it's true—does he sparkle like some damned teenaged vampire? He shivers at the mere thought, but it brings him no closer to an answer.

He asked Monroe once, but the blutbad had nearly choked on his beer and then quickly changed the subject. It didn't help.

He's studied the books, the ones Aunt Marie left him, but if there's information on the Grimm, he can't find it. Which, he supposes when he thinks about it, makes sense. If those books ever fell into the wrong hands—wesen hands—giving them intimate details about a Grimm's strengths and weaknesses would be just as good as offering himself up as a sacrifice. And he's not eager to die anytime soon.

He can feel himself changing, though. He's not the same man he was all those months ago, when he first noticed that he could see things others couldn't. He can feel the power, the Grimm within him, growing stronger every day. It gets to be inconvenient at times, because he can't stop the wesen from being afraid of him, even if he's not there for them. They recoil, and become useless to his investigation. It's becoming problematic, but he's not sure what to do about it, because he's not sure what it is they see when they look at him.

So, he sets about learning to control the Grimm side of his nature. He learns to lock it away. Not permanently, because he knows he may need it at a moment's notice. But he controls it, quiets it, because it's hard to go through life seeing monsters everywhere without becoming a monster himself. Controlling the Grimm helps keep him grounded in the here and now, helps him hang on to justice and his conscience and doing the right thing.

He has no idea if he's successful at hiding what he is until he stops by Monroe's place one evening, just to chat. The _blutbad_ invites him in and offers a beer—the good stuff, and Nick's a little ashamed to admit that drinking beer from bottles instead of cans has grown on him much more than he'd like. But it's the casually offered comment that stops him dead in his tracks.

"Not wearing your Grimm face today, huh?" Monroe says as they move through the living room in search of that excellent beer he's grown accustomed to. "You've been practicing."

Nick just stares at him, but doesn't say anything. He's afraid of a repeat of the last time, frankly, and he's too tired and wound up from a case to pursue the issue anyway. Instead he just smiles and acknowledges the comment with a tip of his head. Monroe chuckles, as if he knows that Nick's purposely not making a thing of it, and heads back to the living room to sit and talk.

Nick feels something settle in his chest as he sits down. It's like the Grimm is finally satisfied, like Nick has finally gotten the clue that his Grimm side has been trying to give him. He wonders idly if his Aunt went through this. He thinks probably not. She'd struck him as the type of person who'd embraced being a Grimm, and all that it entailed. She'd been strong, powerful, by the time she showed up on his doorstep just days before her death.

He still wishes he could have talked to her more about this, about what he's going through and what he's supposed to be. But, then again, if what Monroe has told him is true, maybe he doesn't after all. He can't imagine sweet Aunt Marie being a cold-blooded killer, but apparently she was. It's something he doesn't want to be, because he thinks that would make him no better than the monsters he's supposed to be chasing.

And if they can see _that_ when he looks into their eyes, he'll consider it a victory. He's a Grimm, but he wants to be a different kind of Grimm.

~Finis


End file.
